A David Booth bear story that actually ends well

Vancouver Canucks' David Booth — well-known to be a hunting enthusiast — visits the Abbotsford property of well-known movie animal trainer Mark Dumas, where he got up close and personal with a bear.Photo by
David Booth

After staring down a season from hell, David Booth evidently thought nothing of doing the same thing with a grizzly bear on the weekend.

Booth’s struggles, both with injury recovery and on the ice, have been well documented. In fact, in the last quarter of this sorry Canucks season, the winger has been one of the few good-news stories around this team. His overall game has come around to the point where there is some discussion of the possibility he might not be a compliance buyout, after all.

But back to the grizzly, which Booth — well-known to be a hunting enthusiast — was not stalking, by the way.

He was invited, through a friend, for a Sunday visit to the Abbotsford property of well-known movie animal trainer Mark Dumas, who has a grizzly named Billy, a polar bear named Agee and assorted other exotic creatures that are usually only seen in zoos or the wild.

“It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done,” Booth said on Tuesday before the Canucks took on the New York Rangers.

“A friend set me up with a guy out in Abbotsford. He has a pet polar bear and a pet grizzly. He said it was hands-on, so I jumped at that opportunity. I have a bunch of pictures, but that one was pretty cool, getting licked on the face by a grizzly bear — something I never thought would be possible.”

Though he was assured that he would be safe getting nose-to-nose with Billy, Booth — an experienced hunter — said he was unnerved when the 600-pound teenage bear first walked up to him.

“When you’re looking in a grizzly bear’s eyes, you don’t know,” said Booth, whose fiancée, Ashley Durham, accompanied him and also got up-close with the bear.

“But he said the experience he has with bears is you can really train them. They can do tricks. But this thing was growling right in my face. Looking right down his throat, it’s pretty scary.”

Booth, who went alligator hunting in Florida during the Olympic break, said he’s been up close to big-game animals numerous times, but this experience was unique.

“That’s one of the fiercest animals in all of creation,” he said. “Its claws were longer than my fingers. I got pictures of the guy wrestling it. I wanted to do that, but they wouldn’t let me.”

Not sure if the NHL players’ insurance coverage includes bear mauling.

Booth said he enjoys hunting as much for the interaction as the chase.

“I love animals,” he said. “It’s just being able to interact with them. The majority of the time I go hunting I don’t shoot anything. It’s just cool seeing them in their own habitat, seeing how they interact. That’s why I enjoy what I do.”

Booth’s linemate much of the last 20 games, Zack Kassian, has the size to be called bear-like, but he has no interest in meeting Billy.

“There’s not many humans that would get that close to a giant bear,” said Kassian. “He’s coming back without a scratch, so he must be doing something right. I can tell you right now that I won’t be doing that any time soon. The only animal I’m getting close to is my dog — and he weighs about 12 pounds.”

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